Playing With Sex: How Video Games Are Changing Porn

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Game developers are challenging taboo and social convention to give players a new perspective on sexuality.

By Michael Thomsen

Editor's Note:In case you skipped the headline, this article is about the intersection of interactive and adult entertainment. The author openly discusses sexuality, pornography and Harvest Moon. If any of the above might offend you, please do not read the article. Might want to avoid clicking links and Googling things, too. Otherwise, enjoy.

Pornography is given a special privilege among books, magazines, movies, and video games. While you might watch, read, or play any of the latter, porn is something people 'use.' While we've mostly made our peace with sex in other media, the subject has yet to be fully confronted in video games. Like all conversations put off, sex is finding its way into games with or without help from big publishers or studios.

Bonetown was made by a small group of college grads who decided that the open world gameplay of Grand Theft Auto could be used for a satiric rip, substituting sex missions for shootouts.

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We wanted people to play it and laugh at it and not just sit there alone and jerk off.

"We started in July '05 in the garage of one of my partners," Maximus Baptist, the nom de guerre of Bonetown's creator, told me. "We put together a demo and then got a private investor. We've all been gamers our whole lives and we've all liked porn since junior high. No one's ever tried to put the two together since Leisure Suit Larry or Custer's Revenge, and no one had really succeeded at it. So we wanted to be the first interactive game that has porno in it."

You start out in Bonetown as a nobody. By accepting sex missions you earn money and reputation that unlocks more alluring women to have sex with, women who previously would have had no interest in you. The team took inspiration from the irreverence of South Park, creating a city infested with drug addicts, hookers, pimps, and lowbrow social stereotypes.

"We wanted to be over the top, to be comedy," Baptist told me. "We wanted people to play it and laugh at it and not just sit there alone and jerk off."

While most developers go through a relatively straightforward process of conceiving, prototyping, and pitching projects to larger publishers, those interested in making porn are left entirely on their own for financing and distribution. Porn games are doomed to receive Adults Only ratings from the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which automatically bars them from ever appearing on home consoles or handhelds. Likewise digital distribution services like Steam, Direct2Drive, and Apple's App Store will not distribute games they deem to be inappropriate or offensive. Retailers like Amazon and Walmart won't stock their games either.

Developers like Bonetown's DWC Software have to create games, find individual financiers, build and maintain their own distribution channels, and do all their own marketing. As with the early days of video porn many of the companies help each other, sharing business strategies, marketing ideas, and insights into monetization strategies like in-game currency and virtual goods.

"We have a community that's generated over 70,000 items," Brad Abrams of Thrixxx told me. "That's anything from movies to poses or models."

Thrixxx makes a number of interactive sex simulators based around a particular theme or audience, including gay, lesbian, hentai, and go-go dancing. Unlike Bonetown, Thrixxx games aren't built for comic affect but aim to arouse players' creative imaginations.

"We've purposely decided not to try and address the uncanny valley thing," Abrams said. (The term "uncanny valley" refers to the point at which human avatars become so lifelike that players are put off by them.) "It's better to create more sensuous poses and new activities rather than trying to cross that valley. Our big thing is not so much visual realism, it's more about getting people to buy into the control experience and be able to control every aspect of the fantasy. If you can't get that control from the game we've allowed you to modify it with the tools in the game to create what your fantasy is."

Films and magazines rely on literal depictions of people having sex, something that has traditionally appealed to men far more than women. In 2000 the majority of visitors to sex websites were men—75% according to comScore as cited in journalist Debbie Nathan's book, Pornography. By 2007 that figure was very nearly balanced with 52% of visitors to sex websites being men while women make up 48%. As porn widens out from the literal depictions of penetration to imaginative and impressionistic scenarios women are finding more to appreciate.

"It's not like I have to blow my mind to imagine an animated game," Susie Bright, the sex advocate, writer, and author of the forthcoming memoir Big Sex Little Death, told me. "I was already doing that in my mind looking at racy comic books that girls weren't supposed to look at when I was younger."